


Perhaps, Maybe, Maybe Not

by Jennifer-Oksana (JenniferOksana)



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Episode: s02e05 The Farm, F/F, Femslash, Reality Bending, Religious Discussion, Sex, Slash, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:56:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6232393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferOksana/pseuds/Jennifer-Oksana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You only answer perhaps, perhaps, perhaps." Or, Starbuck and Six confront each other on the edges of perception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perhaps, Maybe, Maybe Not

Under the drip of morphia, or whatever the frak it is that Simon's got in her IV, Kara does a lot of dreaming. Or maybe she's got it backwards. Maybe her dreams are the real world and the waking world that comes and goes, with her world all blown to frak, Cylons looking like real, live people, and Kara on some crazy-ass suicide mission for a schoolteacher gone crazier, that's bullshit fake.

Starbuck's not sure, never will be sure, but when she is awake, watching the drip drip drip of fluid in the IV, she's starting to see things. Hear things.

Dream pretty damn noisy.

"What is real, Lieutenant?" asks that harsh, brassy voice of that blonde bitch who practically killed Kara. "I can show you how your gods have abandoned you. How your leaders are rudderless and corrupt."

"Yeah, well, frak you, toaster," Kara manages as a half-ass rejoinder. "Your god did all this, took everything and left us all dealing with radiation fall-out, and you don't ever ask why. That's pretty frakked up, right there."

When she's talking back, Kara's got a good cigar between her fingers, and she's leaning back in the most comfortable chair she's ever had the pleasure of relaxing in. Sometimes. Sometimes, she's trapped in her bed while she sees a woman's hand tracing over the drip.

Stupid arrow. It's what the realities have between them, connecting them like a thready pulse. In one world, Kara has the arrow. In the other world, the Cylon bitch has the arrow. Stupid frakking arrow.

"You had almost two months to steal that damn thing," Kara points out, dragging on her cigar. Possibly this is Valhöll. It's possible if the Cylon got her stupid arrow and killed Kara dead, that Kara would go there. "Why the drama of a fight where you could lose?"

"It wasn't God's will," says the blonde, looking down at Kara. There are many copies, and all of them are complete bitches.

"Your god's not big on the planning, is he?" Kara replies, goosebumps rising on her arms. Is she hanging out with the righteous warrior dead, or is she frakking stuck on some frakking hospital bed with a bunch of scars and a dead Anders to deal with? "You know what I think? I think you don't have a damn God, and it scares you so much you make shit up."

"Or maybe God's got a plan that's so big that it's both," the blonde says. "Maybe you should praise him because he's giving you an idea of what it would be like if you lost. If you could rest at last."

It's official: Kara hates Cylon mysticism worse than she hates Tigh on a three-day drunk and the stupid frakking arrow combined. 

"You believe the schoolteacher? Even though she's the one who did this to you?" asks the Cylon. "I mean, to be fair, your madwoman president did get you killed in pursuit of something you're not even sure you believe."

"Hey, at least my crazy talks to me," Kara replies sharply. "Ever seen your God? Get his autograph? Ever question any of his supposed orders?"

Cylon bitch looks pretty frakking tired of the merry-go-round that seems to be taking place between two realities, and Kara's thinking maybe, maybe this means Kara's going to die, and that would almost be okay.

To rest, to be free of all the shit that's happened that's real whether Kara's alive or dead. Except that it would make Kara a failure, and she's not big on failing again, especially not for some Cylon who might not even be real.

"I pray," the blonde says, sounding far away even though her lips are brushing against Kara's ear, trespassing those inner labyrinths and making the tiny hairs tremble. "I listen. I get answers."

There are benefits to being somewhere between Valhöll, death, and a hospital bed, and one is that Kara doesn't have to wonder why her cigar's gone and she's got a warm little thrill. It's just how it is.

"Your answers are wrong, bitch," Kara answers. "Your god doesn't know shit."

"Our God," Kara's double insists, her ghost-touch tickling Kara's bared upper arm. "There's only one and he's screwing with all of us."

"In one world, I live," Kara says, accepting the Cylon, her double, into her lap as easily as if she were a child. "The arrow goes to Roslin, and the fleet finds Earth."

"Don't get ahead of yourself. In one world, you live," Cylon-girl says dubiously, putting her hands on her own breasts, pushing them up for Kara to want. "In one world, I live. In both versions, God's will is done."

"That's not possible," Kara says, taking the blonde's hands in her own. There are long, long fingers. "That's a paradox."

"Truth can only live in paradoxes and in boundaries and doorways," the Cylon replies. "If you question too hard, everything becomes so much meat. Murder. A catalog of deterministic factors that condemn intelligence, in the end, to be a particularly masochistic form of entropy."

"What's entropy?" Kara hisses, all her muscles ready to attack.

"Embracing the reason why you want to frak me," says the blonde uber-goddess whom Kara has killed for an artifact neither of them understands.

"I want to frak you? Think again, bitch," Kara mutters, running her hands up and down its back. "I want to frakking frak you up. That's different."

"Six," the Cylon says, grinding against Kara. "I don't have a name, but I'm number Six."

"Great to know you, Number Six," Kara answers, her own hips rising up to meet Six's downward swirls. "I guess there were five models who were better than you, huh?"

"You're still frakking wet for a mere Six," the blonde replies. "You still want me to finger you 'til you scream. You don't like yours too good, do you, Starbuck? No gods for you, just killing machines who smell like good pussy and the remains of a good cigar."

The speech is pretty frakking good, except that Kara's pretty sure it's what she's supposed to say. The words are wrong for the Cylon bitch. They're not supposed to be so similar.

"Stop being me," Kara says, shaking her head. They're blurring into each other, bleeding into the edges of each other's reality because they're connected. Stupid connecting arrow.

"Stop being nothing," Six says.

"I'm not nothing," Kara replies, eyes flaring. "I have the arrow and you're frakking dead. I lived, you died, your god, if he even exists, chose ME."

"Laura Roslin chose you," Six says.

"Then what, your god must like her and her plans a lot better than me or you, right?" Kara replies. This is all a dream, or maybe it's her reality that's a dream. But either way, Kara wants to wake up. "And you and me, we're just pawns."

She pushes Six away, and the two of them are staring at each other, stark naked with all their scars between them. Laid bare in this nowhere-place that is neither real nor false. Just temporary.

Six laughs and drops to her knees, putting her hands on Kara's thighs and pulling them open. She places open-mouthed kisses on Kara's aching thighs, resting a hand for just a moment on a place just above Kara's hip.

"Make a move, Lieutenant," the Cylon orders.

Kara holds still, and a rough, warm tongue takes a long swipe over her inner thigh, her outer lips.

This is not real. This is the only real. She's being shattered by someone who could be her, and Kara's not certain if it's all morphia racing through her veins, or if it's her own fingers pretending to be someone else, or what.

There are too many options, and entropy is always increasing.

Kara can't go back, so she might as well go forward. Might as well come, Number Six's tongue and fingers all over her cunt, shuddering and whining.

Might as well face an uncertain future. Because she can't go back. She can't make it not happen, but she can slow the inevitable.

Her eyes open, and her bedsheets are soaked with sweat.

Maybe that's why she's alive. Because she can go forward, despite the uncertainty, and that's what's needed.

Kara puts her hand on her belly, right where the blonde touched her. There's an unfamiliar texture under Kara's fingertips.

It's real. And Kara wonders, is there only one world, one that spends its time dreaming of the others? Or maybe she's frakked up on too much frakking morphia.

Enough frakking dithering. One thing is clear: she is not the same as she was yesterday.

Kara's maybe finally starting to get it. A little.


End file.
